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tv   Public Affairs  CSPAN  October 30, 2012 10:00am-1:00pm EDT

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sure what the caller is referencing. again, i would say that i fully trust in our president's leadership when it comes to foreign policy and military issues. he has shown that he can make incredibly bold decisions that need to be made to keep us safe. , and to keep our interests abroad save as well. host: thank you for your time in talking to our viewers this morning. guest: thanks for having me. host: we continue to look at swing states and new hampshire is on our list tomorrow. we will see you at 7:00 a.m. eastern time. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]
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300,000 people are without power. early boating has been canceled. as an extended an extra day in maryland. president obama is back here in washington overseeing the federal response to the hurricane. mitt romney is taking part in
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storm relief efforts taking part today. he is in ohio. those coming to the event are being asked to bring relief supplies. bill clinton will be campaigning for the present today at a rally in minneapolis at the university of minnesota. we will have another event this afternoon. paul ryan will drop by a romney campaign office banking volunteers for help with storm relief efforts. this evening he is scheduled to stop at another office in hudson. fo>> i like to ask you a questin similar to that of the vice- presidential candidates. as a catholic, how has your view on abortion been shipped by your religion. >> i'm not catholic. i am an episcopalian.
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i cannot answer that question. my husband is a catholic. we have raised our children as catholics. i would be happy to talk about my view on abortion. it should be safe, legal, and repair. >> here is a valid point that is constructed. we have babies in america and i would that are being aborted simply because they are little baby girls, because the mother wants a boy instead of a girl. we have legislation before congress that prohibits sex selective abortion. she thinks it is ridiculous to talk about it. i think it matters to the little girls are being aborted. >> election day is one week away.
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>> i like watching the gavel-to- gavel coverage. it is the only place to get the real deal. i also enjoy news makers and the book programs. i like that the commentary is only intended to let you know what is going on. there is not too much analysis. opinion.rtainly is i appreciate all i can see through it and understand ithe programming itself. i can get my analysis elsewhere. if you want to see how your government works directly, c- span is about the only place to go. >> he watches c-span on comcast. c-span, treated by america's cable companies' in 1979 and brought to you as a public service by your television provider.
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>> joe biden posted she economic advisor jared bernstein and murray took part in a debate hosted by the tariff board school of public policy. this is about one hour and 20 minutes. [applause] >> thank you. in 1962, 50 years ago, mike published "poverty in the united states." at the time the american economy was in the golden age of economic prosperity. a rising tide was lifting all boats. the economy had grown rapidly. the wages of most workers have been growing faster than the rate of theinflation.
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almost no one talked about poverty. book not only change the discourse but the public policy landscape. he wrote "there is a familiar america that has the highest standard of living the world has ever known. that is not change the fact that tens of millions of americans are at this very moment existing at levels of been need those necessary for human decency." a short time later. the article appeared in the new yorker called "our invisible port." they said "the extent of our poverty has suddenly become visible."
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it is said that walter heller gate kennedy both the book and the new yorker review. most people and he read only the review. he did tell carrington to begin to put together some proposals to reduce poverty. last chapters he wrote "there is no point to tell the institutions of a war on poverty. there's information enough for actions. all that is lacking is the political will." less than two years after the introduction of the publication of the other america, president johnson responded, at demonstrating both the political will and the plan that he had called for. johnson declared "many americans
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live on the outskirts of hope, because of their poverty and some because of their color. all too many because of both. our task is to help replace this despair with opportunity." this administration today declares unconditional war on poverty in america. he went on to say the richest nation on earth can afford to win it. many of the programs that we know today were implemented or expanded, started the job corps, what we now call pell grants, medicaid, and increase social security benefits. the official poverty rate continues to fall and reached 11% not the 1973. leading scholars predicted that poverty is officially measured would be eliminated by 1980.
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did that did not happen. did the discussion and debate will focus on why that was the case. we live in an era in which economic growth has not been trickling down to the port. where the rich have gotten much richer in the middle class has struggled. today's debate is timely. umar the bureau announces the poverty rate for 2011. -- tomorrow the bureau announced the poverty rate for 2011. me and my colleagues think it will increase. the other america is like and well. our goal today is to go back to his early goal in to make sure that poverty and inequality are visible. i am honored to welcome charles murray, of the scholar at the
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american enterprise institute in jared bernstein. there are longer biographies of them in clarence page at the chicago tribune. our moderator have many accomplishments. i want to turn the floor over to them. i would simply close by saying this debate is timely not only because it is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the other america and the test mar the senses releases the official poverty rate, but because we're in the midst of a presidential campaign that is likely to determine the future of public policies. please join me in welcoming charles, jared, and clarence.
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[applause] >> thank you very much. it is my honor and privilege to be your moderator here today. that is largely because these two gentlemen have been so and lightning for me in the past i've never had the opportunity to put them together. i am writing -- reminded of the editor you give me a newspaper column in the 1980's. we tell me what is editor had told him, the columnists are sort of like a one i javelin thrower. the keep the crowd alert. but they do not score many
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points. that is my job today. keep things moving along. keeping an to the time schedule. that may be a challenge. we are well familiar with that. the format will be such that we will have opening remarks by charles murray and then by jerry bernstein -- jared bernstein . we'll talk about the future of inequality and out it differs sunday divide half a century ago. we will go to questions from the audience.
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and did my best to understand this. my 23 year old son is that you're with me. i will do the best i can hear i. by the time the book came out i was in school. i remember asking my double class are we. "son, we po" we could not even afford the o and the r. i had to get an education. i had the opportunity to move up. that is why i love this country. i was able to work in the steel mills.
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it was a good working class in cincinnati. the good work here during the summer. -- you could work there during the summer. it is a great opportunity. there are not jobs in the still mill like there used to be. tuition is 10 times what it was when i was a student. aboard mobility is the one used to be. and known charles -- and control
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since 1984. he is a way of life seen books that either in rage or to let me. nothing in between. we've talked many times over the years. we have sometimes argued. even only argue it is fascinating. i learned so much. you have the cream of the crop year today. we look forward to your questions as well. without further ado, i am going to pull out my little iphone now
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that my son as taught me how to work it and i will be doing the timing here as well. charles, you have seven minutes to respond to our question. >> i am not sure the topic of the debate is. he said is about poverty. then i heard it was about inequality on the poster pure and good to ignore both of those in my opening remarks. -- any thoughts on the poster. i am going to ignore both of those in my opening remarks. [laughter] this is a problem for the people on the right in general. i am a weird part of the right. as far as i know, there are very few people on the right to say you are in it on your own. there are very few who are against the advanced welfare state because it costs too much. there are other reasons for my
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opposition to the advanced welfare state into a lot of the measures that went on to the war and poverty. here is the cliff notes version. falin human life is not a mattef passing time as pleasantly as possible. human life can be a life well lived which as transcendental meaning, whether that is defined in terms of religion or whether it is determined in other ways in which life and take on significance. must be spent in doing important things, things which you can take a deep satisfaction. my proposition is that the deep satisfaction in a human life
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basically come from for domains. those are location, family, community and faith. i will hold that. basically those are all there are. there are other ways of having pleasures in life. those are the things that give a steep satisfaction. the reason they give us deep satisfaction is because if we're lucky we spent our lives doing something which we can legitimately say to ourselves made a difference in something which was important to do, raising a child. making a living, finding a location is important. being a member of the community and where you are engaged of lives of those around you. that can be important.
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i charge against the welfare state is that bit inherently, for reasons that cannot be escaped drains the vitality from each of those four domains of life. it cannot be overcome by cut your program designs. the advanced welfare state says life is tough and there are some things that we will help take the trouble out of. taking some of the trouble out of losing a job, unemployment insurance. that can be a good thing. it drained to some degree the satisfaction that you get from getting a job in holding a job. the same is true in a variety of other programs. helping children in poverty.
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it is necessary to say that in so far as the government take some of the trouble out of raising a child is also drains some of the satisfaction you take out of doing it appeared that is true not only of four people but also of people at the top. if you are a has been here likes to think he has been a good husband and father and has not spent as many time and energy as my wife, she gets more satisfaction added a parent and i do because of the nature of her activities. in saying all of this, i leave open all sorts of things we can debate. i leave open all sorts of ways in which we can talk about government might help or might not help. ultimately, what i reject to in
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a great many of the programs, the problem is that they did too much of the life out of life. in these remarks i have not attended to persuade any of you that i am right. i do hope as i talked it will give you a context for explaining what i mean. >> thank you very much. >> do i get this extra time? >> let me just say what an honor it is to share a stage with charles murray and with clarence. charles is a giant of social policy and one of the most influential people in that field. while i profoundly disagree with much of what he has written and
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believes to be true, i have been reading him for years. i've always heard a voice of passion. it is always about trying to figure out ways to help and not hurt the people as they try to achieve their goals and dreams. i can only hope that i have the same level of passion and commitment in my own work. i am a true admirer of the tone. i disagree with a lot of the ideas. >> that start your clock now? >> if you please. the met opening remarks i wanted to do two things. one, a very brief brushback on
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one of the key pieces of this opening. it is so key to where he and i differ. that is the impact of what he calls the welfare state on the lives of people and their achievements. i am not even sure that there is a welfare state anymore. i'm not sure what that means. i do know that we now have literally decades of research trying to lower at the extent to which measures like an earned income tax credit and temporary assistance for needy families, medicaid and education programs he will tell me if he is right. and their impact on people's lives. it is far from sucking the life out of them.
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i would argue that not only do these provisions critically offset multiple failures embed, did they provide people with the opportunities they need to achieve the vocation and faith that absence this support there are have a much harder time and cheating. i want to reflect on michael harrington and how big is the current economic divide and as a different now versus when he broke the other america. the economic divide is much lighter now than it was then. the most recent year was 2007. 23% of income accrued to the top 1%. back in the early '60s, that was 10%.
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he was writing about an economic divide where 10% occurred tuesday top 1%. hthe growth of inequality is a major factor of understanding in the quality. this is a dynamic story. it has great barrington area of agreement between charles and myself. it is very consistent with harrington. i think he has written this. public policy should not concern itself with the qualities of outcome but equality of opportunity. billions for equal opportunity, not 1 cent for equal outcome. we may find yourself more in agreement with public investment that level the playing field. sheldon was mentioning pell
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grants before but there are expenditures targeted at preschool. here is the thing. of the one side there is this issue of any quality in outcomes. there is a very compelling body of research that links higher in quality -- any quality to diminished opportunity. there is a linkage between the economic divide and high levels of inequality and diminished opportunity for those in the bottom half. with out all this, growth is broadly shared enemies to the kind of party reduction that he talked about.
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once you introduce high levels into this model, a couple of things go wrong. g.d.p. and productivity growth are diverted from lower income families. middle incomes stagnate and party increases as it did in the business cycle expansion of the 2000's. poverty went up as the economy expanded. this reduces generational mobility. this generates a set of predictions. it predicts that income concentration plays up in the political rally. i feel very strongly about this. it worries me. by protecting the beneficiary of inequalities and blocking the policies that a push against it, politics reinforced the rising inequality that blocks those policies that will promote growth.
quote
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i'll have time to go through this. i'll let time to go through more examples. the problem is that if you look at what i've tried to paint here is a pretty rich economic tapestry. i think he is looking at too small a piece of it. there are multi causal phenomenon going in there. i think it was in hamlet. he says there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. where is the housing in the finance and the bold and bust cycles that have characterized the recession's?
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where is the loss of retirement well as a result of financial busts. where is the keynesian demand? there is the persistent absence of full anemployment. i firmly believe that in a corner of the realm of economic reality where poverty interact with the rest of the society, charles is on to a important point. by looking at a narrow piece, he misses the bigger picture. i am sure more time to elaborate that. >> we will do our best. little zinger in the end.
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about the causes of this poverty. he spoke earlier in terms of character, attitudes, behavior, a culture. he brings in the goin geopolitil changes we have had. i'm going to give you an opportunity to respond to that. where does that play a role in your analysis that collect? if you're going to say that there has been a fundamental change in working-class culture in the united states by males with regard to the labor force, you are applies to say this because the economy with that or is this because of other factors that there are a couple of ways of looking at that. we will be peaking out
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individual indicators. let me use the example of labor force participation rate among males. i am specifically talking about white males getting rid of all the complicated issues associated with race, ages 30- 49. in 1960 you had participation among that group because if you were not looking for a job and you were a man in your 30's or 40's you were a bomb. that started to rise not after the economy went south in the 1970's in terms a son dimension, it started to rise during full employment and 1960's. it continue to rise.
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rise.s a continuing se if we had globalization taking away the jobs, i could understand that. we have had times in the 1980's and especially the last half of the 1990's for their dogs for anybody who wanted to work. no answer is the disputes that. there were help wanted signs everywhere. to the extent that there just are not jobs out there, but they like to go out and work but cannot find jobs, we should have seen a plunge in the drop-off from the labor force in the last half of the 90's. we did not hea. it stabilized. everything i am saying predate the great recession. and my arguments depends -- none
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of my arguments to pin down what happened since then. you compare that data with oppositional data on the ground. what you find is in talking to people live in working-class communities there are a bunch of guys looking for work. that is true. there are a bunch of guys who are not pure their living off their girlfriends or parents. -- who are not. the are living off their girlfriends or parents. they do not want jobs. it is a triangulation of evidence " sociologically and economic, all of which point to a fundamental shift in the attitude toward work. a growing proportion of men in the working class [inaudible] unless we recognize that this is going to exist a matter what happens to the economy we're missing a very important part of the puzzle.
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>> i want to clarify one thing. you refer to your latest book. i like, by the way. >> that was one of the good ones. it does focus just on white americans. poverty got colorize international conversation. you see the problem around 1960 which reminds me of my friend pat buchanan who thinks that western civilization began to decline as sure as ellis appeared on the ed sullivan show. -- evlis appeared on the ed sullivan show.
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am i reading you correctly? >> your rental have to give him some extra time. -- you're going to have to give him some extra time. i expect foley did not talk about causes for the new lower class. -- i specifically did not talk about causes for the new lower class because i did not want you to be mad at me. i wanted a book that a person like you could read and not against the wall. losing ground is a prolonged indictment of the 1960's which has a lot to answer for. i would be willing to go back and talk about it more with numbers. i want to add a very important point.
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it is that make any difference whether i was right or not. what about the original causes? it is not make any difference if jared is right about the role globalization. we are where we are. what has happened is a variety of cultural changes that have transcended whatever the original causes were. i can describe exactly how they got squeezed out. there is no rewinding that we can do. if we're going to deal with the problems we're talking about, there is going to have to be fresh thinking about where we can go from here because going back to the past is not possible. >> i feel very strongly that
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your diagnosis leads to your prescription. if your diagnosis is very individually focused and leadbelly charleses, your prescriptions are going to emphasize this as opposed to a policy said i believe is more responsiblresponsive to structul problems. i assume we differ on that. i like to disagree about the data. that is always somewhat discomforting.
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i know you are quite to the datamonger. fought i suggest whatever differences we have we tried to work out in some public forum. here is a couple of facts that i think go in quite a difference in direction. charles was asserting that it really cannot be a story of the demand side of the labor market and the lack of ample employment opportunities for feckless guys because of you look at times were the job market was strong, you do not seem much response. i was puzzling over this. i looked at the sample charge was looking at. white men age 30-49, high school
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degree or less and a few other ingredients. here is what i did. to talk about regression analysis. i took the time series of annual hours of work of white guys age 30-49, a high school degrees or less, and i looked at the relationship between their annual hours work including people out to the labor market in correlated it with unemployment. i ran a regression of the percent change of the hours. about one variable explain 76% of the variation. keep that in your mind. that is 81 variable correlation.
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-- that is one of variable correlation. mint in unemployment explain 3/4 of the annual hours -- annual unemployment explains 3/4 of the annual hours. when the unemployment rate goes up, they're ours go down. this has to do with single moms. we shifted from a cash base welfare system to temper assistance for needy families in welfare reform that was passed in the clinton years. if you look at the employment rate of single mothers and compare them to the employment rate to married moms, you will
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that the employment rate of single moms grow precipitously in the 1990's. part of that is a murray f. that. -- effect. it has to do with requirements within the welfare program. researchers try to tease out this. we had a large increase in the earned income tax credit. the analysis just that maybe 15% or 20% was welfare reform. you have been married moms who
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are in control here. the employment rate truck along. the single moms go up a map to the married moms. in 2000 the all fly down. once employment growth became quite weak you see a very good controlled experiment up charleses hypophysis. if the job market was creating employment demand to give single moms the opportunity they have to see, you see very large employment effects quite different in charles argument. once the job market weakens you see the opposite happening.
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charles out slowly has a point in the corner of the picture is looking at. i very strongly caution an interpretation that leaves out the role of labor demand, and job availability in social policy that incentivizes work. >> i saw a certain contradiction there myself. how you respond to that? >> we do not want to get too deep in the weeds. subversives --urba cibber -- subversive with the addition of between the two of us. those in the labor force are working pretty hard. including in the white working- class the hours of work has not gone down. yet another set of guys who are
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not in the labor force at all. there's something really simple bop the percentage of men and not in the labor force. there is a real simple relationship to policy. if you want to shore of the economic problems of guys not in the labor force, you're saying if only we could create a full employment economy again. but what many s&ls all together. women have flocked into the labor force. in 1960 you are a guy holding down a lower income job with a wife and family, you had an authentic place in that community of respect. it was respectful within the
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community. you were looked up to. you also have respect in the broader community. you had a bunch of the things that i deployed. this is a statement of fact. this command is no longer buy you that. you have people telling you that you are a chomp working for chump change. am i sorry that the women went into the labor force? no. there are things that happened as a result of the things which are bad things. one of the things that has happened is the role of the male changed dramatically and that is reflected in a growing population of a feckless men.
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daunting i would add is i am not trying for a global explanation that absolves the market of everything. i am trying to force an awareness of cultural shifts that have occurred in this country that are very deep and important the most damaging to the people in our society. >> what about the role of culture? >> if you go back and read michael harrington even william julius, there is and the cultural peace to all of their knowledge. -- there has been a cultural peace to all of their knowledge. this was not unfamiliar language to michael harrington.
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i do not like it. i do not know really what charles means and i have read his book carefully when he talks about this cultural shift. i do not mean to imply that there are no feckless guys or that the share of the sample you have picked out, at the white working class males with no labor presentation has increase. they are a shrinking share of the total. your own numbers showed the strength by got half the total population. i to objections. this is not the position of charles murray or any of the researchers. in the real world, the cultural
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and this is becomes damaging lead devices. ive.amaging leand devices kolter is a much richer phenomenon. -- culture is a much richer phenomena appeared many of the critics at to get this wrong. people like charles when he talks about the shift are identifying as a social dysfunction with in a culture are actually viewed as abhorrence. you're arguing a cultural shift does not make a lot of sense. i do not see them embracing
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these bad behavior's a subgroups' believe are ok. the parents of kids in gangs hate the fact that their children are in gangs. parents of teenagers with on -- this feeds right into a very that involvessinesdevice discrimination. i do not think it means the same thing to any two people. i think it is way too fuzzy a concept. >> money ask you in terms of -- let me ask you in terms of culture. we have shared values.
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is it too fuzzy for us to deal with? we all agree it is there. we all agree it has an impact. >> a lot of it we should embrace. if there are cultural values inconsistent with the broader community, that is a much more complex question i get to charles murray. i do not think there is an obvious role for government in addressing the kind of a thing. there is an obvious role in promoting the well being of kids to recognize their potential. i am afraid the cultural debate is a distraction from making sure people have the opportunities they need to realize their potential.
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>> welfare reform. there are those that argue that welfare reform put recipient mothers to work and change a culture that before had this incentivized work. this reinforced the values. >> i would not go there. there is research i could cite that argues that somewhere between 15% or 30% probably did a lot. this is a perfectly legitimate thing.
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i started life as a social worker. the culture of work has been embedded in poor families, middle-class, and wealthy families. they want their kids to get ahead just like we do. all this cultural step becomes way to close to discrimination and they are the bad guys and we are the good guys. >> is there something useful the government can do?
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was not being flippant. we have cultural diversions. there is no social institution more central to american culture than marriage. you go to 1960 in the have the definition of the working class. in 1960, we have always in the
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white working class. this was a real small difference. marriage was the overwhelming normal. as the 2010, you saw a 80 4% of white ages 30-49 your married. that number have been pretty stable since the mid-1980's. divorce has been declining. a lot of those marriages our first marriages. marriage is alive and well and the upper middle class. in the white working-class, 48% are married. there are real few examples of such a shift in a central cultural institution in 50 years as the one i just gave you. i am not speaking as someone who is testing moral value to marriage. i am saying the marriage is the building block of communities.
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single fathers do not coach little league teams. single mothers very seldom, all the things that go into social capital which makes communities work just as off the edge of a cliff when you lose marriage. you have an increasing agreement among social scientists who follow this data, left as well as right, who says single parenthood is bad for kids. it is not that some women cannot be wonderful mothers. of course they can. are their role deficits and what happens to the flourishing of children? the answer is yes. no matter what the cause, you
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have had a divergence between working middle-class america and upper-middle-class america that so transcends anything having to do with a share in comcome inequality and unless we come to grips with that change we're going to be stuck on dead center. >> that is a pretty dynamic example of marriage. is this something government can do to restore marriage as an institution? do we need to? >> i think to understand the phenomenon that you're talking about, and it is a very important one. you have to understand the related cultural phenomenon.
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you have to prove she women's occupational upgrading and accomplishments and the earnings advances which of gone in a completely different direction than in. men's wages for a middle and low-income has stagnated in fallen while women's hats and evidently gone up. about the middle as well. i am not saying that there are not lots of women facing tough problems in the job market and gender wage discrimination is a live in remains a problem. if you just look at the relative growth rates, that has given women a lot more say in when they get married and when they bear children. this is not a bad thing.
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you have also had the jobs in earnings opportunity and non college-educated men falling quite sharply. the most pointed arguments against losing ground was by a sociologist who wrote a book that observed a very strong correlation between the decline in the marriageable mail index. he is looking at the economic conditions of artillery gun black men who would otherwise have been partners of -- of particularly young black men would otherwise have been partners. he clearly identified the lack of earnings decline in job opportunities. i an not saying that i want to economic and -- demint
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condition improved it would go away. i am saying the fact that women have more economic and spiritual independence to decide when they get married and their children is a good thing. if the economic conditions of their partners were improved, i think that when the positive difference as well. >> you talk about many coming out of this class for attacking marriage and traditional institution. the irony is today it is the upper educated class that has
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the lowest out of wedlock birth rate. the farther down you go this disillusion of institutions. turfed the were >> i have learned to be patient. and i am eager to know if you have any new insights as to why this has happened, that we have this class divide that matches a cultural divide? >> i was smiling because, i get really irritated at the upper middle-class. and who better to be irritated at them? in the 1960's, my generation of -- marriage -- we do not need that. this that any other thing.
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and as we got older, we have the wherewithal to recover from our salinas and we did. so we got our lives and order. and now i am no longer smiling. here is the thing that angers me the most about the 1960's. we changed the rules of the game. not for everybody, we change them for poor people and we especially change them for poor and young people, and we change them for four young black people. it happened and everything you can talk about, not just the welfare system and the increase in benefits for single women, putting that aside for a minute. the changes in education that went on in the 1960's. it became a whole lot easier to go to school and not learn anything, and whole lot easier to drop out. a whole lot easier to get away with stuff that kept you from getting an education. in a crime, crime took off after
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being plateaued throughout the 1950's. there was a conventional wisdom that said, if you put people in prison if only made them into smarter criminals. as we had a rising crime rate you had reductions in people in prison for crimes. we had a raw reduction in the number of people in prison in the 1960's. a raw reduction, not just a reduction in the term of ratios. it became a whole lot safer, if you were a teenage kid to engage in crime. when i did an analysis of the cook county delinquents, more delinquents than a non in the 1970's, the average number of arrests for those kids before they went to a custodial facilities for the first time, it was 13.6. it became a lot easier to engage in crime. can the whole lot easier to survive if you are a guy without having a job. you go through any of the day
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today, ground level ways of looking at the rod that a poor person and a poor young person and a poor young black person had come in the 1960's changed the rules that make it profitable to behave in ways that were disastrous and the long term. they did not have the resources to recover. they couldn't say, the lsd was spun but i might get a job and have kids and a family and so forth. so the baby boomers have a lot to answer for and my view. in that sense, we did something that in my view during the 1960's was incredibly destructive to poor people. >> past due to a cultural analysis -- for giving me, but it sounds like, to the baby boomers have something to answer for? in terms of setting themselves as role models for behavior?
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>> looked, there is this industry now among the punditry to scold the baby boomers. i was opening the paper the other day and bill keller had an article about how the baby boomers are greedily eating up the entitlements and skews the baby boomers love to attack each other. >> i have got to say, it doesn't, it does not resonate with me. and it was part of coming apart that i have trouble figuring out. at the end of the book, charles suggests that people like us preach what we practice, and i would describe -- i think that at least tried to in part some of their industriousness and to everyone else or
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to the bottom third you are not doing not stop. and i was describing it to a conservative friend, and he said, even if i wanted to do that, what would i do? the twin neighborhood and stand on the street corner and say, let me tell you about how industrious i am. part of it is, pragmatically i do not get it. i relate -- the problems you described in the 1960's -- sounded in no small part correct. however, i disagree with where that has led us today. and in fact, i think, and this goes directly against, i think you are deeply held principles. i want to get to this core point. i think we have done considerable corruption to many of the problems that you have identified, particularly in the provision of anti-poverty
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programs and social support. for example, a recent, very authoritative study by academics with other republican or liberal bomb on the scale, look at the impact, the anti- poverty of our whole panoply of social programs. this was a paper with bob moffett, with a very good reputation as a stone a cold place econometric shown on this. they said alatas but the anti- poverty and effectiveness -- let us look at the anti-poverty effectiveness. and let us not just look at whether the reduced poverty or not, because there poverty can go down. but a less account for any work disincentives. we have enough years of research at with an estimate to what extent there are work incentives or incentives to have babies out of wedlock.
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or destructive incentives but girls was talking about that were planted in the 1960's. -- or the destructive incentives that were planted in the 1960's. 29 points down to 15% in the united states. imported by, this impact is going badly affected by work incentives which in the aggregate of almost no effect on a pre-transfer poverty rates in the population as a whole. i would argue that we have come a long way and have built a system that is quite effective. i will give you one more point. the great recession, if you looked at the official poverty rates, 2007 to 2010, you will find they went up from something
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like 12.5% to 15.1%. they went up significantly. the official poverty rate. it doesn't count. it doesn't cut any of the benefits of that argued are so important. it doesn't account for nutritional programs. it is an account for medicaid. as an account for the earned income credit. for the child tax credit. our various subsidies like that. put those into the mix. and poverty barely moved of the great recession. one from 15.3% to 15.5%. if you include the benefits of your suppose to dampen the impact of poverty over a huge market failure, they cannot say, well, they should have gotten jobs. you see an extremely effective safety net at work. so i would argue that he identifies problems that were real, but that social policy has
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done a much better job than commonly realized at dealing with. >> a question from the audience. and pass along to me. peter tweeted in our past and. in the first one is for you, charles. [indiscernible] can may shape the role [indiscernible] >> fish town is a working-class area of philadelphia. i use that as a generic label. nonprofits, can they play a role? i have got to interject something. i have had so many debates with people who haven't the least idea what i have said, who have
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never read anything i have done, they have only read the reviews. i cannot tell you how it warms my heart that you actually read my stuff. i do not care if you agree, you read it and you know what i said. [laughter] >> i even have you on my kindle. >> nonprofits can play an important part. but kennedy as a historical has worked in the united states has been -- but community as a historical -- as it has historically worked not the state has been informal. a lot of the social capital. binds' communities together does not have any organizational basis. it was a hard working, hard fighting community. there was no crime and fish town. they did not bother calling the
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police, they took care of it themselves. it was a place that your kids could play outside safely. because kids took an eye out. and you could go to a place like fish town, and you can document as the author of patricia could document the ways in which all of that has been ravaged for whatever reason. let me put it this way, if you have a 48% marriage among adults in a community, you have no community. it just is a contradiction. community depends too much on all of the things of adults to do because they have kids their raising to gather. and when that goes away, the good it goes away to. >> again, and i like charles murray personally so much. so am so appreciative of his passion here that i really feel
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bad that i so disagree with almost everything he is saying here. [laughter] but i just -- the problem is, with the way charles murray views the world to the way i think the world works, it is not as on a married people got married, everything would be ok here. it is not that they would get on a much better economic trajectory. i am not sure they would appear in a good example is, some recent research that was done on a teens who had children out of wedlock. if something that every if poverty researcher agrees is a serious problem and something charles has written about critically for years. there's a recent study that i thought convincingly argued, i will not go into the weeds out of respect for the timing here.
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but, it argues convincingly by looking at things like kids who got pregnant but miscarried, or kids who trying to isolate a counterfactual of someone who looked a lot like the teen who had, who became a mom and the one who did not. it looks like the teens who became moms, and had this very poor economic trajectory, researchers would look at them and said that is because he became a teen mom. if you try to do the best you can to do recover factual and look at someone who is just like them who did not have the child, it turns out their economic trajectory was awfully similar, just about the same. i am not saying that -- i am not saying teens should become moms. it is not good for their opportunities. but whether we are talking about
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marriage or at of wedlock births, is that shakespeare >> about -- there is more to this than you are seeing. it is the economy and the opportunity, the educational opportunities committee ability to access and finished school, they are not there for you whether you are married, with a of a kick out of wedlock, it is just extremely tough. and public policy that doesn't realize that and do something about it for the out of wedlock mom and for the one who did not, is i think arrest. if you focus too much on the culture and the behavior and the merit and the mom herself, you will miss that point. >> i want to jump then quickly. because i am a hedgehog on this issue as opposed to a fox. i made the assertion whether or not teenage births -- i said without families, communities do
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not exist. families with children are what provide the social capital that makes communities work. and i think that is an important hedgehog truth that can unite people across a wide variety of ideologies. you can say, it is the fault of the economy we do not have families, but the simple truth, communities do not work without families and children. that is the way the world really works. >> forgive me, i question for jared. why did the obama administration it do more -- why did not the obama administration do more for poor communities given his work as a community organizer? some insight from your white house position. >> if you looked, and going to quote one of my colleagues, you can go on the web site of our institution, cbp.org you will
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find a number of papers but look at the impact on poverty of the stimulus, the recovery act. the recovery act lifted millions of people out of poverty. expanded the earned income tax credit. if you are not working, it did not help you. but a lot of people kept their jobs. the child tax credit was made refundable down to lower income levels. lifted a lot of people of poverty. the tax credit helped low-income workers, later the payroll tax credit helped. the expansion of unemployment insurance. critical. you heard, we will probably launch market poverty went up and 2011. on question only, if that is true, one of the reasons is because we pulled back some of the safety net in terms of extended unemployment insurance programs running out for people. in a labor market but was still
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much to on welcoming. all of those measures and more, it was in subsidized jobs program that was very effective, big banks helping people. i think in the recovery act, the president did quite a bit. >> would you like to respond? >> i do not follow current politics. i do not know what is going on. [laughter] >> let me ask you -- had a question for you. you mentioned the need for fresh thinking and where we can go from here. are there any talks about how the left and right might be able to generate the political will? >> is there is. read a book 2004 i guess advocating a basic guaranteed in the time. and people on the left said, what is he doing that for?
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>> i read about 12. it was a short. >> yes. i think that is the way to go. and i have my reasons for wanting to go that way. we are not going to go back to a state.arian pre-= i want to strike a grand bargain between limited government people like me and social and democrats. i want to say okay, we give you expenditures, you give us limited control of government on people's lives. the best way to do that is to take all of the income distribution we have now, including corporate transfers, all types of transfers, and use that to provide everybody with a good basic guaranteed in the,.
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and i go through the book to describe to my fellow libertarians why i think this would work. but there is a potential there for discussion across its theological lines. >> in deed. i want to comment on that. since then, dave chappel had an interesting thing on his show. no question about it. when the great social critics of our time. if not exactly the same idea that you are working with, but in his bid, his skit was a what if sort of a proposition. what if black americans were really [indiscernible] and the bottom line is, they would have it spent by sundown mostly on a lottery tickets. it was a hilarious bit, you had to be there. [laughter] the rerun them forever.
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but with that little nugget out of there, and you can address this, i am sure people say this, and people have a guaranteed income -- >> that is a longer conversation then we can afford right now. i spent a lot of time working through those questions. >> an interesting book the bell. -- book, though. >> i think it is good to have a big thinkers like charles put out interesting ideas like that. but it is so far away from anything like politically realistic but i have a hard time grasping my hand around it. -- wrapping my head if around it. these days is politically
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unrealistic to count on congress keeping the lights on. but in a more normal times what i am going to talk about i think is important. and i think maybe charles would agree with me. we now have a program, charles and i agree that, i shouldn't say that, i have a very much hammered on this point that there's not enough work out there for -- to meet the supply of a underutilized workers, especially non-college educated men. we have a work-based health care system, and i think that is a perfectly legitimate social policy. but not at work does not exist. work based welfare without work
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is a cruel hoax. work based welfare with work can work and can help enrich the lives of low-income people and their kids. we saw 1990's during welfare reform. i would propose that if the economy is not creating enough jobs for low income people, it is the role of the public sector to create them. we should have direct public service employment for those who need to work, want to work, who we want to work when there are not enough jobs. instead of giving them money, create jobs for them and believe me, there is enough work to be done in this economy and our infrastructure that we could find good things for people to do. >> thank you very much. i am going to call you back to the stand here. thank you very much. our time has run out. >> on behalf of the ford school of the university of michigan, please give another round of applause.
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thank you very much. [laughter] it is >> now election day, watching our coverage of the presidential candidates plus debate from key house senate and governor's races from around the country. coming up next, we will go to mexico for debate. and about an hour, united states ohio senate. a little later, first term of the schilling squares off among sherry. and as we look at live pictures and the white house, president obama has received his daily briefing, he continues working on relief efforts for hurricane sandy, about 350,000 people are without power in the metro washington d.c. area. early voting has already been
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cancelled and the district and in maryland. and extended by an extra day. we are learning the president will stay here in washington tomorrow to monitor the response to the hurricane, to ensure all federal resources continue to be provided. presidents will not take part in campaign even said had been scheduled an ohio tomorrow. he pulled himself off the campaign trail for now, canceling all appearances. though clinton will be campaigning for the president today. his total to hold a rally in minneapolis at the university of minnesota. in other event today in duluth. mitt romney is taking place in stark relief efforts in ohio. paul ryan is holding informal greetings in wisconsin. the romney campaign announcing that a political rally in des moines, iowa would go on as scheduled tonight and ann romney will fill in for her husband.
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>> these are the stores are textbook left out. great stories about real people in american history. a very important promise that we do not know about your the first programs in america came 50 years before the mayflower sailed, there were french, they made wine, they had the good sense to land in florida in june instead of december. but then there were wiped out by the spanish, but we left that out of the textbooks. the most famous woman in america, she was taken captive by indians in new hampshire, and the middle of the night, she'd killed her captor, realized she could get out of bounty, she went back, stopped them and went back to boston where she was a heroine. they showed her with a hatchet in one hand in a statute. >> canada davis is our guest on sunday. he is the best selling series --
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do not know much. watch live on book tv on c-span 2. andext, martin heinrich heather wilson. this is about one hour. >> next to him, the deputy director of the new mexico. and john, kfox night anger. -- night anchor.
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is going to start with the first question. >> heather wilson wrote the affordable care act is unconstitutional because of the individual mandate. if not thrown out by the supreme court, it should be repealed and replaced. martin heinrich voted for the bill. what should the replacement be? if it is to be kept, what changes should be made? >> i think it is important to understand why it should be repealed and replaced. it was a mistake. it is already costing jobs in the state of new mexico. it is not just jobs. it takes $700 billion out of medicare. there is only one candidate for the united states senate tonight who has voted to cut medicare.
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i also believe that it increases the cost of health care. we are seeing that already come close to $3,000 increase in health insurance premiums. it is going to cause our rural hospitals to close. i worked on the health care improvement act. i do not mind if my kids are on my insurance. i want them out of my refrigerator, but i do not mind if they are on my insurance. i think people should be able to buy insurance across state lines. those things will help to control the cost of healthcare. the cost of health care is the real problem. >> i am very proud of the work we did to reform health care in this country. a father came up to me in the middle of that debate and
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encapsulated what it meant for his family. he said, my daughter has epilepsy. when she pops out in her coverage and is no longer eligible because she's too old, there is not a single insurance plan that will take care. that is what health insurance reform means to me, he said. we did some very good things in that bill. we made sure insurance companies can no longer discriminate against people for pre-existing conditions. we made sure that we cannot cancel your coverage after you have been paying for years and years. we made sure that kids could stay on their parents' plans up to 26. we did not cut one benefit from the medicare program.
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what we did is we took the subsidies that were going to insurance companies, we put them back into the medicare program. we made it better. we closed the doughnut hole. >> you highlight the things that received broad bipartisan support. those are the things that should be kept. instead of building on those things, he took major issues for all americans and with one faction, shoving it down the throats of people with things in it that they do not like. it will make it harder for them to provide health insurance. nobody has a problem with pre- existing conditions. $700 to tell you that' billion you took out of medicare, about a third of it is for payments for hospitals. hospitals will go out of business because of the health care act. >> congresswoman wilson had
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over a decade in congress to fix those things. that plan was not perfect, there are things i will vote to change. i voted to repeal the 10-99 rule. it also included things like small business tax cuts, tax credits to get more credit to -- more coverage to individuals. i am proud we were able to take on such a big thing. >> we will move to the next question. heath? >> in july, heather wilson wrote a letter to the city council of las cruces opposing a monument and endorsed a bill by steve pierce that would preserve less land. martin heinrich wrote an article in april supporting a much larger monument. why do you believe the larger or smaller monument is the best alternate for the protection of these lands? >> that is what people have told me.
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people who have -- this is important to them. in particular, the sportsmen have said, we love the mountains, but those mountain ranges to the west of the river are critical for us. in addition, there was a recent poll that was done that asked people, do you want a monument? the overwhelming answer was yes. more people prefer the one that had both sides of the river. the county is spectacular. dona ana county. it deserves the recognition that a monument would bring. it deserves the tourism that would come here as a result. >> this is a very big difference between us in the way you go about managing public land and resolving issues and disputes. i believe they're gorgeous.
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the question is, do we put 25% of the county into a national monument without resolving all the issues and access and water rights that are still up in the air? i did have quite a bit of success resolving local issues with respect to land. the way to do it is to work with local leaders to resolve those issues. the congressman's approach was to write to the president of the united states and ask him to create a national monument here in dona ana county without resolving any of local issues that are still obviously there. i do not think washington should have an overriding local control and resolution here. those kinds of extreme single
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faction approaches do not work in the long term to resolve land disputes. >> i was writing to the president at the behest of the whole coalition of local leaders. from the mayor to the chamber to many of local sportsmen's clubs, one of the broadest bipartisan groups of supporters i've ever seen. i think we should listen to them. there is an overwhelming support for a new national monument. i am very happy to join with the local support and help make that happen. >> by denying the controversy exists does not make it go away. these 30 cattle growers on the western side of this county, the county commission voted against having a national monument up next to the border of their county. there are a lot of issues with law enforcement, particularly
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the issue of creating a funnel for narcotics trafficking within 5 miles of the new mexico border. there are hundreds of new mexicans who have signed petitions that saying, please do not do this. you are ignoring them. you are not going to find a solution that way. >> let's move on to the next question. >> in 2007, a bipartisan group of u.s. senators reached a tentative compromise on immigration reform. but even with president bush's support, the compromise collapsed. most agree we need immigration reform. what reforms do yoou support? and how would you get the senate to approve immigration reform when such a bipartisan group could not? representative wilson. >> it is separate from border security. the united states has to have effective control of our borders. the number of people crossing the border illegally has gone down because of the resources that we put in there since 2005. that is a good thing. the people who are still crossing tend to be heavily armed narco traffickers and
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human traffickers. it's very dangerous. with respect to immigration, i support legal immigration. i actually think we need changes to our immigration laws. right now, a large number of people come to this country because they get a visa through a lottery. i do not think a lottery or getting the golden ticket, like willy wonka's chocolate factory, should be the way that you come to america. i think we want the best and brightest and hardest-working people to be able to come to this country and build this great country. i believe going forward, what we need to do is build that coalition of people who believe that america's immigration policy should benefit the united states of america. >> my father came here in the 1930's as an immigrant from germany. i take this issue of immigration policy reform seriously. i think we need leadership on this issue. heather wilson was in congress
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for over a decade. to this day, i cannot figure out where she stands on the dream act. one of the simplest measures for immigration reform. when i got to congress, one of the first things i did was to co-sponsor comprehensive immigration reform. a path to fix our broken system that does not embrace amnesty, that embraces responsibility. i am proud of the leadership on that. i fought to secure the border, sent 1000 new border patrol agents to the border. hundreds of new customs agents. but we also need leadership on the broken immigration system. we need comprehensive immigration reform and we should pass the dream act. i would love to know where my opponent stands on the dream act. >> it's fascinating to me. you have been in the congress for four years. for the first two years, you had an overwhelming majority of the house and the senate and the presidency.
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you said you wanted to do immigration reform, but you did not do it. with respect to young people, i came into this understanding the situation when my colleague nominated a kid to go to the naval academy. she didn't find out until she was applying to the naval academy. her parents brought her here at a young age and she was not here legally. i think we need to find a permanent solution for those kids. i look forward to working with marco rubio to do that in the senate. the current administration's policy has derailed that effort. >> once again, from day one, i made this a priority. i joined with my colleagues and i supported it. the reason why we do not have comprehensive immigration reform is because we do not have the bipartisan approach we had a few years ago. we have a tea party approach to
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immigration reform. republicans are afraid to stand up and co-sponsored the bill. you saw what happened to -- that -- you saw what happened to richard lugar. is sad and i look forward to a time where we can agree on that. >> the oil and gas industry contributes to the revenue of this state. when you look at the regulation of that industry, would you support new regulation? is the regulation we have about right? or do we need to have less regulation? >> i support appropriate regulation. you should never have a regulation that does not have a purpose. oil and gas can be produced responsibly and it is done so across new mexico any given day. we have great independent producers.
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we need to make sure that when people do pollute our air or water, they're held responsible. and so i think we need regulations that do not overly burden the industry, but make sure we are protecting our water. nothing is more precious to the state of new mexico and to any western state than the water we have. i used to be the natural resources trusty. -- trustee. you can make sure this industry can produce oil and gas without polluting, but we need regulations to make sure the bad actors are held responsible. >> most of the regulation of oil and gas exploration here in new mexico is done by state government, not by federal government. there are certain requirements on federal lands. but i think the big difference on energy policy has to do with which direction we need to go.
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i believe in a balanced long- term energy plan for this country that includes increasing american sources of supply. he voted for cap-and-trade, the biggest tax on energy, it now being put through regulatory constraints in the history of this country. if it is fully implemented, the loss of 11,000 jobs in new mexico. an increase of costs on our electric bills of $1,000 per household. he also said that coal is fuel of the past. coal is responsible for 70% of the electricity in this state. if it is the fuel of the past, low-cost energy bills are also a thing of the past. i will stand up and fight for those jobs. >> speaking of jobs, congresswoman wilson called those jobs in renewables a
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green dream. they are more than a dream to the people working in those industries. if you look at the study on transmission, they said we could have 25,000 jobs if we built the transmission. i'm going to lead. i will get the power line built and we will have those jobs. >> you need to look at the data from the work force solutions department here in the state of new mexico. look at the fastest growing jobs in the state. renewables is not even on the list. oil, coal, firefighting, teachers. all of those jobs that you touted, all out of business. the jobs in the southern part of the state never got going.
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those jobs do not currently exist. the jobs in oil and gas are growing and i'm going to fight for those jobs here and now. >> ok, thank you. we will move on to a foreign policy question. heath? >> iran appears to be developing a nuclear bomb. the presence of the united -- the president of the united states will not let that happen. with the consequences of long- term wars in iraq and afghanistan, if the administration proposed military action against iran, what would be your criteria? >> i agree with the president that we cannot allow iran to have a nuclear weapon or the ability to deliver it. we need to use all of our elements of national power to try to prevent that from happening. our policy needs to be cleared. i think it has been a little bit monday over the past year. -- i think it has been a little bit muddy over the past year.
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when the administration does put the emphasis on trying to hold israel back, it sends a clear message to iran that they should move as quickly as they can towards a nuclear weapon. that is contrary to our interest. what kinds of things can we do to prevent iran from getting a nuclear weapon? first, the sanctions. those sanctions are having a heavy impact on the iranian economy. we should continue to propagate the fractures in iranian society so that pressure is put on their leadership to forgo the path of nuclear weapons. if it comes down to it, and the united states has to take action, the only thing that is worse than taking military action is and iran with a nuclear weapon. >> i think that any time american troops are committed anywhere in the world, there should be a direct security threat to the united states. and i think on this issue, the
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president has been very clear about what american policy is. iran will not develop a nuclear weapon. we must use every tool in the toolbox to make sure they do not before we prematurely start talking about military action. we need to continue the diplomacy that is bringing other countries to the table with sanctions as well. we need to continue the covert action that has been very successful in slowing the program. we need to continue the economic sanctions that i did not just support, i helped pushed through the congress. those sanctions are drawing a wedge between the leadership in that country and the people. they devalued the currency, they made it hard to sell their petroleum on the global market. given the mistakes that were made in the last decade regarding the policy that our country took in iraq to make sure we get this right. >> you ask a broader question about when is it legitimate to
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use military force. what is the criteria? i believed that u.s. military force should only be used as a last resort. when there are no other options. u.s. military force should only be used to protect america's vital national interest with very clear objectives and the force necessary to win and come home again. >> i am very pleased to hear congresswoman wilson say that. i do not believe that was the criteria that was used 10 years ago last week when she voted to go into a war in iraq, a war that was not paid for, a war that cost us thousands of american lives, and a war that was based on politicized intelligence and not a direct threat to the united states of america. >> let's go back to the domestic agenda. john?
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>> congress has failed to pass a new farm bill. should the federal government end most agricultural subsidies? how did you propose reforming agriculture subsidies? >> we made a mistake about over 30 years ago in terms of the direction we went with our farm subsidies regarding producing agricultural crops. we invested in commodities, we kept down the price of food, which is a very laudable goal. all of the money we saved on cheaper food went to the health care system. because of those commodity policies. i think what we need to do is move more towards local agriculture, investing in food crops that are healthy for our children, we need to make sure every school in the united states is not selling just corn
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and soybean commodities as part of their school lunch program, but giving healthy fruits and vegetables grown in places like right here in new mexico. we can remodel our farm policy to make this country much healthier and to save money within the health-care system. >> here in new mexico, a lot of the pieces of the farm bill do not have a huge impact on the crops they grow. even some of them are contrary to the interest of the farmers and ranchers. particularly, when it comes to dairy. our dairies are so large. with respect to agriculture policy, when i listen to farmers and ranchers, the death tax. einrich voted to ri
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reinstate the death tax. i think result in the breaking up of family farms and ranches. i voted to repeal. the second thing that is very important for farmers is low energy costs. you need an energy policy that keeps american energy cost low. the congressman's approach would increase the price of energy and increase the price of food. there is regulatory impact on our agricultural industry that needs to be straightened out. there was one bill that was very important to farmers and ranchers to straighten out some of the regulation. the congressman voted against it. it was the top priority for farmers and ranchers. >> once again, we do not have a farm bill because the tea party has kept washington, d.c., from being able to do its work. this is the first time in modern history the farm bill has expired.
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it is one emblematic example of how dysfunctional the tea party has made our country. congresswoman wilson embraced the tea party when she signed their cut, cap, and balance pledge. look that up. go to youtube and type it in. deep cuts to social security and medicare and a bigger budget deficit in the future. >> it is fascinating to me that someone could think that cutting wasteful spending, forcing congress to live within its means, and balancing the budget is extreme. i think those kinds of things, forcing congress to live within its means forces the congress to set some priorities and not waste money on things like solyndra, so we can prioritize things such as social security, medicare, and education. that is what i would do in the congress.
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there have been many times when the farm bill has lapsed and we've got four years without even having a budget. >> ok. congressman wilson will get to ask a question. congressman, you have 30 seconds to ask the question. you have one minute and 15 seconds to answer. but. 30 seconds to re >> last night at the present debate, president obama touted coal and said we now have a clean coal technology and it should be part of our future energy mix. i agree with him. we have a 300 years' supply in this country. do you still disagree with the president and myself and think that coal is a thing of the past? what would you say to the miners about why their jobs are
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going to be a thing of the past? >> i grew up in a family of miners. my father was a miner and my grandfather was a miner. it is honest work. i respect greatly those union miners up in northwestern new mexico who do good work. they put food on their family's table. when it comes to policy, i will be looking for the policies that create the most jobs in the future. so when my kids grow up in new mexico, they have a bright future. today, with an industry that she calls the green dream, there are five times as many people working directly in renewables as directly in coal in new mexico. i will not apologize for investing in the future of our energy supply. we should be moving in the direction of domestic and more clean. it is not a dream. 20 years ago, when i was in college, my friends and i built
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a solar car that we raced across the united states. this is not rocket science, folks. this industry has been around a long time. it just requires political leadership. political leadership that my opponent is not willing to exercise. >> the political leadership came from the president of the united states. we both agree coal must be part of america's energy future. it is low cost, it is much cleaner than it was 30 years ago, and i am and all the above energy kind of gal. the energy costs about 5 cents a kilowatt hour. currently, solar energy is four or five times that much. if coal is the fuel of the past, reasonably priced electric bills are a thing of the past. i'm going to fight for those jobs and i will fight for low- cost energy. >> ok. that concludes the first half of our debate.
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we will take a 60-90 second non- commercial break and we'll be right back with you. thank you. [applause] >> we will go ahead and get the second part of the debate started. as i mentioned, the situation will be reversed in terms of the questioning. the first part of the second half of this is we will ask the candidates a couple of individual questions. as i said, if the question is asked specifically of one of the candidate, that candidate will have one minute and 15 seconds to answer. there will be no rebuttal. then the other candidate will get a question to be asked. we will ask two questions of each of them before we go back into the other part of our format.
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we will go and get started. >> there is overwhelming agreement among non-partisan and bipartisan commissions that we need both spending cuts and tax increases to address our nation's financial problems. are there any specific budget cuts or entitlement reforms you would support? why or why not? >> absolutely. i could not agree more with the premise of your question. if we're going to be serious about this deficit, we have to work on it from both sides. we will see agency budgets cut. we will see subsidies cut. we can no longer afford eliminating subsidies for corn based ethanol. if you look at the big international multinational oil
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corporations, they get enormous subsidies. they made over $100 billion last year. and yet we're giving them billions of dollars in subsidies to do what they already do very well. we need to get rid of the tax benefits that encourage companies, allow them to exp ense and deduct when they moved operations and jobs overseas. if we're going to have some incentives, they should be for companies creating jobs here at home. we should take a balanced approach. those cuts, plus revenue increases. i do not think it is a right that someone like mitt romney who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars should pay a 13 or 14% effective tax rate when our small businesses and firefighters and teachers pay more than that. >> we think this is a very important question. we'll be asking the same question of you, representative
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wilson. >> rather than asking you about spending cuts, are there any tax increases or other revenue raisers you would support? why or why not? >> what is fascinating is that the congressman was asked what spending cuts he would support. what he talked about was tax increases. i think that his balanced approach is to raise spending and raise taxes. i think we have a serious spending problem in washington. we do not have a taxing problem in washington. the difference between us is i believe we can get rid of a lot of the special provisions in the tax code. i think we should extend all the current tax code for the next year and spend the next year simplifying the tax code, taking out almost all the special provisions in that tax code. our tax code is longer than the king james version of the bible. i do not think it has that much
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to say. you simplify it, you can lower the rate, broaden the base, and get rid of almost all the special provisions. what that would do is encourage economic growth. the way to balance the budget is policies that encourage economic growth. that includes tax simplification across the board. >> let's move on. heath? >> you voted in favor of the debt reduction bill that calls for $1.20 trillion in spending cuts, with half of that coming from the defense budget. military leaders say it would be stay crippling. if the justices said it would be devastating to the economy -- state legislators said it would be devastating to the economy. can you explain your vote on that bill? >> absolutely. i voted to avoid default, just like john mccain. he made that exact same vote. we voted to make sure we did not go into a double-dip
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recession and lead the world into a global recession. i did not support sequestration. sequestration is based on the tea party premise that you do not raise revenues whatsoever. i believe we need to take a balanced approach. we are going to need to increase revenues, and we will need to cut agency budgets and stomach some cuts that many democrats are not going to be happy about. that is the only way we get to where we need to be on this. i think it is incumbent upon myself and everyone else in congress to get back to work after this election and come up with a solution that has both of those pieces. cuts and revenues, rather than embraces the tea party sequestration approach. >> do you believe it is possible to make medicare sustainable well into the future without converting it into a voucher system? would you ever support a voucher system?
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on it, it is there for them without any changes unless they want those kinds of changes. the congressman did not ask any seniors whether they wanted $700 billion taken out of medicare to fund new programs under the health care act. programs. i think we want an opportunity society with a safety net. medicare has always been part of that safety net. the way to make medicare solvent is to do some things like we did with medicare part d and involve competition and choice for seniors because competition helps to control the cost. medicare is 30% under the original projected cost. people have choices and competition has helped to bring down the cost of health care. >> let's go back to foreign- policy. both candidates. the arab spring has been hailed
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as a shift towards democracy. we are seeing increasingly violent incidents, including the murder of the american ambassador in libya. how do you walk the tightrope of encouraging the spread of democratic values when doing so can lead to violence against americans or the installation of heads of states to do not support what many had considered to be traditional american values? >> let me express my condolences are regarded ambassador stevens and the other americans who lost their lives. they gave their lives for this country. and for a vision of a better world. i do think that president obama was correct in working with our allies to see gaddafi removed in libya.
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that does not mean you hold that a mission accomplished banner. this is a complicated region and the future is uncertain. we know the past was not serving in u.n. security interest and not good for the people of libya. the future is going to take a lot of work. i think you stick your principles, you support democracy, the support transparency, and you keep working to make it a safer world. we all know that this is a very volatile region. there are no easy answers. >> the events over the last few months across north africa and middle east have highlighted that we still are living in a dangerous world. our american foreign-policy must be reflective of our deeply held beliefs. a belief in freedom. at the same time, when people rebelled against despots, there is the opportunity and the possibility that factions can
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take advantage of that rebellion and turn societies away from freedom. you saw that in 1979 in iran when the movement resulted in the rise of the ayatollah. it is a time of tremendous peril. one of the most important things in a time of peril and tremendous change is for the united states to remain strong. a weakened american military means a more dangerous world. the congressman said he is opposed to sequestering. if you're opposed to it, why did you vote for it? tohin 90 days, we're going be faced with 20,000 jobs lost here in new mexico because of the bill that you voted for. our army will go down to --
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>> congresswoman wilson, that is simply not the case. the only way sequestration happens is if congress refuses to act. i do not know anyone, at least that i work with on the armed services committee, who believes that sequestration is a good thing. i have a long history of fighting hard for the installations in my district. i will continue that same approach statewide. these are things critical to new mexico jobs. i will continue to fight for them. >> we have had 700 people laid off at los alamos because you failed to stand up and fight for the plutonium facility. we also lost the f-16s. they used to have an f-16 mission. within four months of the
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taking office, vermont got our national guard fighters. kirkland air force base is more vulnerable. >> tell that to the people who are still working there today. there are a thousand people who have jobs because we saved that mission. >> we are going to move on. we're going to stay within the state with a final question. >> new mexico had both its largest and most expensive wildfires this year. some have alleged that mismanagement by the forest service was to blame for the size and severity. do you agree? >> i think our federal government has failed to maintain our public lands. you can see that all across this state.
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the federal government has been cutting back on grazing permits. i supported the healthy forest act which would try to accelerate the ability of people to maintain the public land. our forests are full of fuel and they are tender boxes. we saw the same thing in the lincoln forest. these fires, when they happen, are absolutely catastrophic. we need to get back to multiple uses of federal land. that includes grazing, selective logging. >> we have the fire seasons we have today because the fire
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suppression and because of a little thing called climate change that my opponent refuses to recognize. there are lower humidity levels in those forests in june and july than there were 20 years ago. i have worked in forestry, probably tens of thousands of trees i have watched as our national forests have moved towards more and more thinning. they will not be able to overcome the very real changes that we are seeing around us. it is why we have a moral responsibility to stand up and say, in a state or so many people make their living off of science, so many people are ph.d. is and work in our
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national labs and our universities, we will not stick our heads in the sand and pretend that science does not exist. >> we have failed to maintain our public lands. you can see the difference in the land over 100 years, were they are now heavily loaded with fuel. they are loaded with fuel, dry, and everybody is waiting for the next lightning strike. the endangered species, which prevented people from maintaining a lot of these public lands, only exist on the indian reservations because they have maintained their public lands. i think we need to get back to multiple use of our public land and reasonable land management so we did not face these catastrophic wildfires in the future.
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>> once again, i have worked in these forests. i will tell you that our public lands are something that is critical, not only to our culture in new mexico, but also to our economy. that is why i introduced -- there are public lands all over the state of new mexico that the public cannot get to. i have worked to make sure that campers and sportsmen and people of all stripes can access and enjoy their public lands so that we can protect them as well. >> let's move on. >> many of our veterans suffer from physical or mental wounds inflicted while they serve their country. what would you do to assist them in getting the help they need?
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>> i will work every bit as hard as we of worked for the last four years. we have staff who are specifically assigned to work with veterans to make sure they get all of their benefits and especially those veterans who have come back less than whole from these challenging conflicts in iraq and afghanistan. we have helped hundreds of veterans get the treatment they deserve. i would also make sure that we continue to find the va. that we do not balance our budget on the backs of these people who have served our country. without ever thinking twice about doing it, they stood up
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and they paid the price for the decisions that are made and i never think twice about it. we need to make sure we continue to support the va did make sure they have all the resources that they need. we passed something during my tenure, a two-year budget for the va said they did not get caught up in these in the of your budget battles that golan in washington, d.c., said that no one gets turned away from the front door of the veterans administration. >> our family knows what it means to be veterans. i am proud of the hundreds and thousands of veterans. they never give you a magic wand, but we worked very hard to all of them. our office was the go to office for any better and had a problem. one of the things that bothered me, last week i was contacted by somebody here in new mexico. he said he went to your office for help and told you he had
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been denied disability. he gave you all the papers that he needed. six months later, he got a letter back saying, you have been denied disability. he knew that when he went in. you did not help him at all, he just pushed the paper work around. i believe our veterans deserve the kind of individualized help and attention. >> first off, i am not going to politicize our veterans. we work hard each and every day for them. there are many veterans who live been able to get disability because the facts supported their claim. i cannot work magic. if you do not meet the criteria, you do not meet the criteria. we will go to the end of the earth to make sure the veterans administration treats your claim seriously. if the facts are on your side, we will get you help. >> in this case, you gave him a copy of the letter he gave to
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you five months earlier. he ultimately was able, with the help of a lawyer, to get a disability claim taken care of. the waiting time has increased substantially over the last four years for veterans to get their claims processed. the va has changed the way in which it processes those claims. we need to take a serious look and fixing that system so that when veterans eligible for benefits, they can get their check, get their books, go to school and get on with their lives. >> next question. >> it has been a year since the repeal of don't ask, don't tell. it does not appear to have disrupted the military's ability to do its job. is it time to allow gay marriage? >> i believe marriage is the union of one man and one woman
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as husband and wife. i will stand up and defend that and the united states senate. it is important to understand why that is the case. why does marriage place such an important part in our society? why do we need such a strong marriage culture? the reason is the potential for children. children do not mature for almost two decades. unlike other young animals, they cannot fend for themselves. they're much more likely to be in trouble with the law, they're much more likely to be parents before they are adults themselves. we need a strong set of marriage laws, but a strong marriage and pro-marriage culture and society. this has existed in american and in society for thousands of years.
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i think we would be wrong to change the definition of what marriage really is. >> let me give you a simple answer. yes. i believe that in the eyes of the constitution and in the eyes of the government, everyone has equal rights. i will never tell an institution how to administer their sacrament and what is right in the halls of the church. but as far as the government, we have legal rights in front of the law. i was proud to be one of the people who overturned, don't ask, don't tell. i would ask you to compare my record with that of my opponent. she was asked about this one, about the legislation that senator al franken has sponsored to deal with the epidemic of teasing that has resulted in many children losing their lives.
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and she said, we just have to tolerate it and sort of equated it to the first amendment. that is never going to be my approach to civil liberties or equality. i am proud that we overturned don't ask, don't tell. and yes, marriage and equality is the right thing to do. >> rep wilson? >> the alpha lincolnville that you have sponsored, federal funding from schools, if there is believed in the schools, bullying for any reason is an unacceptable. i think that is best dealt with by teachers and parents and authorities, not by cutting funds from a school if there is bullying going on in the school. that is the position i take. like you, i am a parent. we do not need washington to
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solve those problems for us. >> rep? >> actually, when congress when wilson was in congress, she helped pass the no child left behind legislation, and it did just that. it took away power from our schools and put it into a one size fits all structure that does not teach new mexico kids. i would repeal the legislation. >> i'm going to do something a little different here, and give each of you a chance for one more were bottle on this issue, starting with rep wilson. >> the no child left behind our left all of those regulations and micromanagement and let school districts move money around from one federal program to another. i actually believe that no child left behind probably needed to be changed five or six years ago to allow for more
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flexibility at the local level for what success really meant. right now, the entire state of new mexico is now exempt from no child left behind. i think that is the right thing to do. but if you now have a problem with the way your school is run, you do not have to go to washington. you can do that here locally. and you protect the funds and to allow local leaders to make decisions about how those funds are used. that is the best. >> my son carter and my son micah both go to public school. and the kind of testing that is required today is not helpful to their teacher to be able to tailor construction to them individually. in addition, it is a great public school. it was -- it did not beat ayp, as it did three things incredibly well and one thing not to standard. that has simply labeled our
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children and our schools and not helped our teachers either. >> we will move to the program where congressman, you get to ask a question of representative wilson. you have 30 seconds to ask that question. rep wilson, you have one minute and 15 seconds to respond. representative heinrich, you have 30 seconds to rebut. >> and as someone who came here undocumented, unbeknownst to them when they were three months of age, those are the dreamers, those are the kids that the dream act were designed for. would you vote for that student to attend the naval academy? >> there have been a variety of versions of the dream act over the years. i think we need a solution to this. senator marco rubio was working
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toward a bipartisan legislative permanent solution to this when the department of homeland security came out with a new memo that said we will now use prosecutorial discretion. unfortunately, that is not a permanent solution. as i suspected at the time, i thought that not many young people would come forward to take advantage of that process. in reality, only about 7% of children eligible have come forward for the process. we need a permanent solution for kids who have not come here through their own choice so that they can be absorbed into the country that they know. there are a variety of ways to do that. i look forward to moving forward with that kind of bipartisan solution. >> what you heard there were a lot of words and no answer. >> there are a variety of versions of it. >> you either vote for the
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dream act or you do not. i have voted for it and i would again. that is the kind of leadership we need on immigration issues in washington today. >> we are at the end of the program. we provide one minute for each of the candidates to have closing statements. >> libraries are protecting social security and medicare, tax cuts for the middle class, keeping our promises to veterans and making college more affordable to everyone. heather wilson has all the wrong priorities. she voted for the wall street bailout and she voted for the deficit. now she wants even more tax breaks for millionaires. congresswoman wilson supports a cap and balance that would require deep cuts to social security and medicare. let me be clear, i will never balance our budget on the backs of our seniors. medicare and social security are not in diamonds. they are a promise that we have
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made to our seniors and are not entitlements. made to our seniors and i plan to keep it. behalf of the people here. i would appreciate your support. >> i believe in an opportunity for society to have a safety net i am a supporter of the safety net programs that my own family depended upon what i was a child and my father was killed unexpectedly. those kinds of unexpected events is for. congressman heinrich has squandered the last four years in congress. we of 30,000 fewer jobs here in new mexico today than we had four years ago. we have small business is holding back on hiring because they have no idea what their taxes are going to be next year. we have community banks that are not lending to small business because they do not
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know what these new regulations on banking mean and they feel like they bet the bank every time. i believe we need to keep taxes low, regulations clear. we need an all-of-the-above energy strategy. and we need to avoid the sequester, which would be devastating to our nation's defense and devastating to mexico's economy. i would ask for your vote and support. >> i want to thank both candidates for taking the time to participate in tonight's debate. it was a lightning and informative and entertaining. i also want to thank our partners, kfox for their participation in tonight's debate. on sunday the newspaper will make its endorsement.
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i encourage all to read it. do not forget to vote. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> pictures now of the jefferson memorial in washington, d.c. obama is at the white house, and this morning he convened a video conference of the situation with vice-president biden, and fema director, and a number of others. last night the president approved disaster declarations for new jersey and new york. the president is off the campaign trail for now,
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campaigning -- canceling the events yesterday and today. bill clinton will be campaigning. romney is taking part in star relief events in all how. ryan is meeting with hurricane relief workers in wisconsin. there will be a political rally in iowa tonight and ann romney will fill in for her husband. you can watch our coverage of the candidate, plus the dates from key house and governor's races. coming up short settlor, sherrod rown will debate josh mandel.
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to ohio for the final debate between brown and mandel. a former marine, mr. mandel serves as the ohio state treasurer. the debate lasts about an hour, hosted by nbc.
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important battleground. i am chuck top of nbc news and welcome to the third and final debate between the two men vying to be one of ohio's two voices for ohio for the next six years. senator sherrod brown claims that he has the track record of working for the state's interest. josh mandel would like to put the country on a better course. we have a live audience here and i promised them that i would give them one chance to applaud both of these gentlemen. so, there is your queue. [applause]
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in exchange, they have said they will keep the applause down. they're able to give their message to you. we have a panel of questioners from around ohio tonight. each candidate will have 90 seconds to respond to a question from our panelists followed by one-and responses from the appointed and then a 30-second rebuttal. mandel won a coin toss early this week and he decided to give his remarks last. >> thank you, nbc. i stood before voters and promise i would fight for the middle class if elected to the senate. that is what i have done for six years. my pledge to you tonight is that i renew that promise and i will continue my fight for the middle class. being a u.s. senator is a lot
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about listening and learning. i have held more than 200 round tables and i gathered a good mix of democrats, republicans, and independence. -- independents. we take the ideas and thoughts back to washington. one of the most mineral discussions i had was with a gentle man who worked in a toledo plant who was afraid that his plant was going to close. he said, how do i support my family? how can i pay my mortgage? how can my daughter continue her studies? i knew that i had to go to work. i've worked with president bush in the fall of 2008, with president obama in the winter of 2009. we knew how important automobiles are up to ohio. 800,000 vehicles are connected to the auto industry. it is not just the big auto assembly plant.
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it is the steel plant just up the road. it is the plant that makes components for airbags in brunswick. we knew that this had to be bipartisan, we knew it had to be a partnership between the fog roll government and local communities, local businesses, small and large alike. we stepped up and did it. now, my point is says that my vote was on american, an american. to me, that a vote was doing my job to fight for their jobs. >> i would like to think nbc and the aarp and everyone is viewing and tonight. my name is josh mandel and i'm running for the u.s. senate. i am running for the senate because washington is broken. here in ohio, one in every four
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children is in poverty. this is unacceptable. in order to change washington, we have to change the leaders we said there. over the next hour, i look forward to having an opportunity to tell you about my specific jobs plan to bring new jobs right here to the state of ohio. unfortunately, in washington, things are broken when it comes to economic development, when it comes to growing the economy right here in the state of ohio. i believe washington can take a little lesson from what we have done here in ohio. look at the state treasurer's office. we have earned the highest rate on our bonds and investments. our portfolio is up over $2 billion since the death took office. we have navigated the european sovereign debt crisis not only with a loss but with a yield on behalf of taxpayers and we have done this well voluntarily cutting our budget. compare that to washington and the failed record where they have not passed a budget for
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over three years. the u.s. credit rating was downgraded for the first time in american history under sherrod brown's. over the next hour, you will probably hear him attack me. he has used most of his money and most of his time attacking me. the question that senator brown is getting throughout the state of ohio from democrats, republicans, and independence is for a guy that has been running for political office since richard nixon is present, to have a few good things to say about your record? he doesn't. he has been in washington for 20 years and it is a record of failure. he talks about setting up for the middle class but the reality is that he stood on the middle class. during his time in washington, and employment rates, foreclosure rates up. health-care costs, up. senator, that is quite a record. the reality is that we need to change washington and the only
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way we will change washington is by changing the people we said there. >> before i get to the questions, i will start with a question for both of you basically on your careers. senator, you have been in congress 20 years. our recent poll shows that congress's approval rating is 12%. when you got into congress, it was a robust 27%. we know that congress is not a popular thing but it is even more unpopular today. how do you defend your time in washington? >> let me give you an example of how my experience works. i know what china trade has done to our state and a loss of manufacturing, virtually every place in the state from medium- size cities like springfield, cleveland, toledo. i knew we had to address that issue. i went to the republican senator s from north carolina, south carolina, alabama because i knew that china currency problems had afflicted their state's textile industry.
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i work with them in a bipartisan manner. we put a group of 8 people together. i'd let on that. that is because of expense i have had in washington is actually helping me to be a better senator . >> you are looking to hold your fourth political office and the last seven years. how do you assure ohio voters that this is not a stepping stone, that you are going to be reliable, a consistent voice for six years? >> i signed a term limits pledge and i think that all politicians should sign the pledge. i stayed there a maximum of 12 years. i will go there with as much passion and energy as possible and make as much positive change as possible and then i will come home and live under the budget and laws that i
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credit. senator brown signed a term limits pledge when he ran in 1992. he promised to stay there for only 12 years. after 12 years he said, well, i changed my mind. i am enjoying my time in washington and he has been there for two decades. i will stay there for the longer than 12 years. i will do everything i can to bring jobs to ohio. then i will live by the same laws and rules that you live by. in washington, sherrod brown's popularity is pretty high, but here in ohio, it is pretty low. >> i talked to a man who is a father of three who has been out of work. he was one of the 4000 people standing in line trying to get one of the positions at the horseshoe casino.
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if you win the election, how can you bring more jobs? >> first of all, look at what has happened. we were losing 300,000 jobs a month. our unemployment rate got higher than 10.6%. today, it is down to 7%. it is not good enough for that gentleman or the other is in line, but it is moving in the right direction but we got there because of the auto rescue. we got there because we are enforcing trade rules. there are jobs and there is a new steel mill in johnstown. more aluminum jobs in sydney and heath. we focused on community colleges, job training, to match up what employers need.
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i was at cincinnati state the other day working with veterans. there is a program that came out of the veterans committee. we passed the vowed to higher heroes act. we're not there yet, we need to focus on this, but we're moving in the right direction in part because of these partnerships between the federal government with local businesses and local communities. >> since sherrod brown went to washington, the unemployment rate for women has gone up but on a plan that rate for african-americans have gone up. on employment rates for the middle-class has gone up. that is a record of failure. first, we must make the tax code more friendly for small businesses. i would be proud to have larger employers and it is small businesses that drive the economy.
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when multinational corporations can filed a 50,000 page tax return and pay no taxes, it is a mark of a broken system. this is unfair to the middle- class and small businesses. we need a tax cut that is simpler for small businesses and middle-class that lower tax rates. secondly, the regulations that come out of washington are crushing small businesses and killing jobs. third, we must drill for oil in gas and irresponsible way affects the water that we drink and it creates jobs throughout the state of ohio. >> what we don't do is follow the economic path that we followed it from 2000 until 2008 where congress -- i opposed this, but congress and the president gave huge tax cuts to the wealthy, hoping that it would trickle-down to the middle class. it did not do that. in the 90's, we saw 21 million jobs increase.
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that is the kind of policy that i want to follow. focus on the middle-class rather than top-down tax breaks that may or may not trickle down for this gentleman or any of those looking for work. >> do you believe that government can create jobs? >> i think is the role of the private sector to create jobs, not the federal government. one of the reasons we got into this mess was because the bailouts. sherrod brown took our taxpayers' money to bail out the big banks. i don't think that we should be bailing out large corporations or banks on wall street. i think the private sector should drive the economy. i trust them a lot more than faceless bureaucrats. >> does the government create jobs? >> the government as part with the private sector to create jobs. right now, if a company sets down in norwood and moves to beijing, shanghai, they get a
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tax deduction against their federal taxes to do that. we have tried to eliminate that tax break that gives an incentive to go overseas and it has been filibustered in the senate. the auto rescue is the perfect example where the government partners with the private sector. i am proud of my work. >> treasurer mandel, you have not specifically indoors to the paul ryan budget plan which would transform medicaid and medicare and make overhauls of many government programs. it is something that virtually all republicans in congress have supported. if elected, would you vote for the ryan budget plan, yes or no, why or why not? supportnot come out in that plan. i have a plan of my own.
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my parents are baby boomers. i believe is unfair to change medicare or social security whatsoever for my grandparents, for my grandmother and her generation, and my parents and their generation. one of the things that bothers me about the problems with social security is that politicians in washington, sherrod brown and others, have wrought and stole from the social security trust fund which funds social security for our senior citizens and they have used that for taxpayer- funded bailout of wall street and large corporations. that should stay in the trust fund to save social security. it comes to medicare, we have to repeal the affordable care act. when senator brown cast the deciding vote on that piece of legislation, they took $716
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billion away from medicare in order to fund obamacare. third, we need to make common- sense cuts in other parts of our government and ordered to fund social security and medicare far into the future. >> you have 60 seconds. >> i don't have a specific comment. >> you might have heard that answer. i know this sounds like washington speak, you vote yes or no. of course i voted against their ryan plan because of what it does to the middle class. it is more tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country, it is more spending on the military, dollars the department of defense did not ask for. it cuts right at the heart of the middle-class and the poor. it is cuts to college pell
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grants, cuts to stafford loans, cuts to education and health care programs that people rely on. that $700 billion myth that we hear about over and over again, if we had cut medicare, you would see less benefits in medicare. instead, seniors in this country have significantly more benefits on all kinds of preventive care, on savings in the prescription drugs because of the health care plan. >> that is definitely washington speak, talking around in circles. here's the reality. senator brown cut $716 billion from medicare. that is unfair to our senior citizens. it is unfair to our baby boomers. it is unfair to others reaching the age of eligibility. i will take a backseat to no one when it comes to saving social security, saving medicare, and ensuring that these programs are funded far to the future. >> i will take a point of privilege. what does that mean? are you for raising, are either
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one of you for raising the retirement age in order to deal with medicare or social security? >> for my grandmother, who i mentioned, we should not change anything for medicare and social security. for my parents, who are baby boomers, we should not change it. my niece is 20 month old. we maintain the status quo. there will be no social security or medicare. obviously, for folks who are toddlers like my niece, or elementary school kids, we have to make changes. one of the things we should celebrate in this country is that people are living on three. -- living longer. we have increased life expectancy, improved health care. >> what is your age limit of when you start doing that? what limit should you start looking at? >> we should look at folks who are least my age and maybe some who are older. for those that are baby boomers and senior citizens, it is
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unfair to change this. >> senator brown, you have been supportive of bowles-simpson and there are changes to the retirement age. >> i will give you a specific answer, no and no. i met a woman in youngstown a few months ago who said that i am 63 years old and i don't have health insurance. i just want to stay alive until i turn 65 so i can get health insurance. if you raise the retirement age for people on medicare, maybe if you dress like this, you're the state treasurer or a u.s. senator, maybe it works. but for a lot of americans, it does not. >> does it work for anybody? >> you don't raise the cost. >> you don't raise the
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retirement age. for people that work in diners, they cannot work until 70. i would not cut benefits or raise the retirement age but i would think about raising the cap. the social security problems are not -- if you can find a way maybe with $300,000, $400,000, we can talk about that in detail. i can give you specifics. >> i guess i have not heard an answer. anyone watching at home has not heard an answer yet. i yield the rest of my time. what did you do with that money in the cells to secrete trust fund? -- in the social security trust fund? >> i came here to talk about issues, not to make accusations. let me explain to you. 1940, when the first check was
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sent out, when fdr signed it, franklin roosevelt, there has never been one of late payment. there has never been one failure to pay for social security. the fact is that it has worked for 75 years. there are counting issues that i disagree with that which would change, but the fact is that it is reliable, and it will be reliable for this generation, the next generation. >> where does it go? what did you do with it? >> let me move on to the next question. >> my question is for senator brown. you were part of the auto bailout which you voted for as saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. -- of jobs. the federal government stands to lose $25 billion on in the investment with gm. is that too steep a price tag? >> i do not entirely agree with the presumption that the federal government stands to lose. i think that right now, the stock price suggests that there
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could be some long-term issues. but, i told you the story of the workers. i can talk to people at the line at the ford plant. i can talk to the people outside of dayton that supply gm and other companies. i can tell you literally hundreds of stories of people whose homes were saved, whose families are getting an education, who are getting along okay today because of that rescue. that is why people came together. that is why senator voinovich, republicans and democrats alike, it was not perfect, but look at where we are. we had 10.6% unemployment rate in 2010, now is 7%. it is going down. 20% of the gdp since the auto rescue. that has come from automobiles,
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20%. a sharonville plant is hiring people for the first time in 12 years. honda has invested 100 million new dollars in their plants. chrysler and gm have invested 500 billion in the last year alone. that is huge progress. it is clearly what keeps the middle-class going. >> you have just heard revisionist history from senator brown. he was not elected in 2010, he was elected in 2006 and he has been in washington for two decades. he attacked his opponent on high unemployment rates. since he has been in washington, unemployment rates have gone up and up for the middle-class come up for women
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come up for african-americans. you have not heard him mention the bailout. middle-class employees. men and women in the 60's and 70's who lost most of their pensions. they were planning on these to live far into old age and he supported a process that stripped them of their pensions. i could not have supported a process that stripped them of their pensions. >> i never said i was elected in 2010. i said i went to work with senator voinovich in 2008 to save this industry. all of this about the workers. i am very concerned about the workers. i have done all kinds of things to protect them. it was gm who made the decision to shortchange the workers and not talk off the pensions. i fought over this, i proposed
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legislation to change this. i want to make this happen. if we had not done this rescue, the delphi workers would have had it worse than they do now. that does not satisfy me, but i will continue to go to bat. >> is there a bailout that would have supported in an industry here in ohio? would there have been a breaking point we said, we have to give the auto industry something? >> i am not a bailout senator . there is no government bailout that i can think of that i could never support. if you are looking for a bailout senator, that is sherrod brown. he used your tax dollars to bail out wall street and large corporations. i will not take your tax dollars and use them to bail out wall street and large corporations. >> go down to the street and
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talk to the management. they understand banks. one of the banks that you railed against i think is supporting you. a number of other regional banks are in business because we stepped up. the point is that you what would you have done. would you not have done what president bush and senator voinovich wanted to do? just let this industry fall apart? i know it is a good talking point for you, kind of empty slogans and poll-tested kinds of statements, but i wonder what you would have done to help the middle class in the state. you have come up with nothing to say how you would want to help the middle class. >> i will give you a few minutes to respond. >> well, i talked earlier about part of my jobs plan. talks reform for small businesses, regulatory reform, also of drilling for gas in the
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state of ohio. we need to do everything we can to help blue-collar workers. my grandfather was a member of the united autoworkers union. my grandparents were immigrants from italy. they put the food on the table, the sacrifice of the mother could go to community college. that is america, that is the strength of the middle class. that is what i will fight for in washington. >> so, there is no government money, government assistance. so, there is no government assistance? >> i would have followed a different process. i believe that if we would have done that, these companies would have come out even stronger and these blue-collar men and women who work for the auto companies would have come out much stronger and the retirees would have actually had their pensions.
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>> we're about to take a break but before we go, a model supreme court justice. >> justice scalia. >> justice sotomayor. >> we have to take a break. when we come back we'll talk about social justice and the role of washington. we will be right back. welcome back to the third and final senate debate. >> this has been a contentious campaign season in this race and it nationally. we are seeing supporters for both of you screaming, taking down each other's signs. the word wire was used. >> want of the issues i believe
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i could find common ground is stopping to use our tax dollars as welfare to foreign countries that harbor terrorists. there are democrats on the other side that i believe i can take on with this issue. they voted to give $1 billion to pakistan. . he has voted to give billions of your dollars to countries like libya where our embassy was overrun and our ambassador was killed. egypt, where the guy from a terrorist organization is running the country. where they are persecuting christians. ed in a vacuum, this would be wrong, but we are not operating in a vacuum. we are operating in an economic
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environment where we have $16 billion debt in washington. families are struggling. we need money here for the american people here. i will stop giving our tax dollars to support terrorists. i support what joe manchin supports regarding responsible exploration for oil and gas. senator brown is try to block exploration of oil and gas and ohio. he does not support our coal mining families in eastern ohio. i will work to keep these energy jobs in ohio. i believe in ohio, energy equals jobs. >> most of what josh said wasn't true, about where we spend
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money, and energy exploration. let me answer it this way. i told you about the roundtables. a farmer told me we can save billions of dollars taking away the farm subsidies with a better safety net. i went to senator thune from south dakota. he got it amended into the farm bill and it passed in july. it can be the china currency bill. i teamed up with kay bailey hutchinson -- i can list 10 or 15 things that were good, bipartisan efforts that are making a difference. >> treasurer mandel? >> that is washington speak. he's been in washington two decades. he has voted with his political
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party 95% of the time. he's a rubber stamp. i will stay away from the bosses on both sides and lobbyists and very powerful interests. my boss is the 11.5 million people in ohio. nobody will push me around. >> senator brown. the senate -- they have not passed a budget in the last three years. senator, your party has been in charge of the senate in that time. how much blame do you share for that? have you had a conversation with senator reid about how the senate isn't doing its job. >> i don't agree with that assumption.
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96% he voted with the republicans. the only time is when he voted for payday lenders then went to the bahamas. the budget resolution is passed by the house and senate. it is a blueprint, but it doesn't have the force of law. yet passed the budget control and, signed by the president of the eds states to drop $2.50 trillion. he says that we did not pass the budget but the budget control light, which has the force of law and cut $2 trillion, is making a difference in getting our budget under control. control.

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